Franklin Cudjoe, the President of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, has described the recent figures being churned by the Electoral Commission as one which further deepens the assertion by the NDC of the general elections being rigged.
According to him, the inconsistency of the figures from the presidential election released by the Electoral Commission has “emboldened” the opposition NDC to make certain pronouncements as a result of the errors.
“The EC’s back and forth has not helped any of the candidates. Now it is giving people, especially the NDC, the chance to be emboldened to say that, the fact that you admit that you have made errors, which was not made once [leave room for doubt]. The EC on three separate occasions changed the results after they first announced that they had made mistakes.
“You are seeing a situation where they are rather now entrenching the belief, however vague it is, that somebody won or lost improperly. I think the major burden we have now is to deal with the inconsistent nature of the EC”.
Meanwhile, the Vice President of IMANI Ghana, Bright Simons, has advised Ghanaians to trust IMANI Ghana and by extension Civil Society Organizations rather than the Electoral Commission.
According to him, the Electoral Commission has over the years come out with more lies than truths about their procurement work, some of which have been exposed by CSOs in the country.
In his words, “we found them to be lying at every turn. Trust and lies don’t mix”.
This, he noted is the predominant reason why IMANI Ghana always refuses to give the EC the benefit of the doubt.
In a post on social media, he pointed out that after reading thousands of pages of the ECs procurement work, it is hard to believe the electoral body will ever speak the truth, thus the need for Ghanaians to listen to the CSOs when they speak the truth on issues.
“They announced to the whole nation that since 2011, they hadn’t bought new BVDs & BVRs. Lies. They spent $60m on these machines between 2015 & 2019. They rigged the $70m tender for the latest equipment from Thales so badly the head of the procurement committee resigned.
The Electoral Commission, he explained, decided to pay over “$3.5m for biometric software from Lithuania that the vendor sells for $350k” and as a result, IMANI “published the full scoping study online so everyone can check for themselves”.
He further asserted the Commission has never passed an asset audit and never auction discarded new machines.
“They demonized their predecessors & called the vendors who worked on the 2016 system, which per CODEO reports, was more efficient end-to-end compared to 2020, crooked. Turns out that as late as 2019 and 2020, they were still paying the old vendors millions for services.
“Had they spent the $15m we believe they needed for new equipment for new polling stations (instead of $70m) & not tossed $60m worth of good devices, they could’ve spent $5m in increasing collation centers. Their new transmission network would not have failed to come online”.
